


confessions and lamentations

by deansnuggles



Series: what is loved endures [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: But canon compliant, Coda, Epilogue, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied Poe Dameron/Finn, M/M, POV Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rey Needs A Hug, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, give characters actual conclusions to their emotional arcs and relationships challenge, literally just two people in a room talking, these are all actual tags I love that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deansnuggles/pseuds/deansnuggles
Summary: “I have something for you, Maz gave me,” Rey says. “From Leia.”Poe stops twirling the hydrospanner, takes a long breath. “Why didn’t Maz just find me herself?”“If I had to guess, she wanted to make sure we had this conversation.” She gives a tight smile. “Neither of us is known for seeking out company in grief.”
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn
Series: what is loved endures [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648315
Comments: 21
Kudos: 132





	confessions and lamentations

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1 of 2 -- I separated them because this is entirely self-contained. This is Poe & Rey, the next in the series will be Poe & Finn (and will be mature+).

“Looks like you and I had the same idea.” Poe looks up from his spot on the floor, sitting against the curved couch in the Falcon. Rey is standing in the doorway, eyebrow cocked, knowing expression on her face. “Mind if I join you? I can find somewhere else, if…”

“Oh no, by all means,” he gestures with a hydrospanner he’d been fiddling with to the floor across from him, “Pull up a bulkhead.”

She folds herself gracefully down onto the floor, looks at him for a long moment, in that piercing way she has. Seeing past all the bullshit and into the heart of things. Reminds him of Leia.

“I have something for you, Maz gave me,” Rey says. “From Leia.”

Poe stops twirling the hydrospanner, takes a long breath. “Why didn’t Maz just find me herself?”

“If I had to guess, she wanted to make sure we had this conversation.” She gives a tight smile. “Neither of us is known for seeking out company in grief.”

He huffs out a laugh, looks down at his hand that’s now tapping the ‘spanner against his knee. No, they weren’t. Poe was a good commander—helping his pilots, his friends, through loss and failure was never something he had trouble with. Dealing with his own, well. That was a work in progress. 

“I don’t… know if I’m ready. For whatever it is.”

“Would you like me to hold onto it for you?”

“Not… not for long, just. Maybe give me a few minutes. Work myself up to it.”

Rey nods, then leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes.

“Sometimes,” she says after a moment, “here in the Falcon, when it’s still, if I close my eyes and listen I can almost hear them. Leia, Han. Luke sometimes. Echoes in the Force.” 

He nods. “I feel it too. I think—I mean, I don’t have the Force, not like you do, but this is where I feel closest to her, I guess. I feel it more strongly in here. I feel _her_ . Out there, the celebrating—it felt suffocating, suddenly. She wasn’t there, and she should be, she _should_ be here, of all of us she deserved to be here for this.” 

He drops the ‘spanner to the side and runs a hand down his face, pinches the bridge of his nose. There hadn’t been any tears yet, but he felt them building up, biding their time. He'd spent a few hours celebrating with the others, and he was happy, of course he was, but as the hours ticked farther away from the battle, the adrenaline wore off and left him with exhaustion and an emptiness he wasn’t sure what to do with. He'd made an appearance—danced a little, drank a little, let Iolo borrow his six-string for some music while everyone lamented Poe’s still-injured arm. He’d seen to it that his remaining pilots were well taken care of, huddled together in a familiar post-battle mix of jubilee and mourning, checked that Finn had company—Rose and Jannah and a few of the former troopers, when he'd left them—and snuck away to the Falcon, parked well away from the crowds. 

“I didn’t prepare for this,” he says. “I never thought—she was never on the front lines, you know? I figured if she went, it would mean we were all long gone, or at least going out with her.”

“I miss her too. I miss… a lot of things. A lot of things will be changing now, I suspect. Mostly for the better, but. It’s still change.”

“I never asked her, I realized, I never asked her what it was like for her at the end of the war— the last war. What it felt like to win but still have so much work left to do, where do you even start? What it felt like to not have a home to go back to. Is winning really winning when it comes after so much loss.” 

He’d known Leia since he was a child, for as long as he could remember she’d been there—not constantly, not even often, but there in the peripheral, always. He remembers her visiting his parents a few times, sometimes with Han Solo, a few times with an infant Ben. He remembers them being there for his mother’s funeral, Leia stopping by occasionally in the following years to check in on his father. She was a reference for him when he applied to the Academy, support as he rose through the ranks, and a shoulder to cry on when Kes passed a few years later. But through all that history, through bringing him into the Resistance and setting him up as her right hand, he’d never asked for her story, in her words. Now he never would.

“I think,” Rey says slowly, snapping him back to the present, “I think she would say, first off, that we have to choose our own paths. That the past can guide us to a point, and learning from past mistakes is essential, but dwelling on might-haves and should-haves will cripple us. It might be best we don’t know how they did it, so we can forge a new way outside the confines of the old. That’s why Master Skywalker didn’t want me to learn about the old Order, and I think why Leia didn’t make a point to tell you how they rebuilt. It was more important for them to teach us to hope, to follow our instincts and our hearts, to trust in our friends. Those are the things that truly made them who they were.”

“What are your instincts telling you?”

Her eyes unfocus a bit, looking past him. “I think… I need to go. Not for long, just, there are some things I’d like to do to honor those we lost. Reflect on what’s happened and see where the Force leads me next.”

“What about Finn?” 

She blinks, refocuses back on him and squints. “What about Finn?” 

“You gonna leave him here by himself again? You know he’s a mess when you’re not here, he worries. And the last two days have been hard on all of us. He needs you.” That much is indisputable. In what capacity, Poe isn’t sure—or maybe he’s in denial, he’s trying not to examine it too closely—but it’s clear to everyone that they are two halves of a whole, connected in a way he doesn’t really understand. 

“He does worry,” Rey says. “I know. I’ll be sure to check in, but he doesn’t need me to hold his hand. Besides, he won’t be by himself. He has you, doesn’t he?”

“That’s not the same.”

“Hmm. Isn’t it?”

“It isn’t, and you know it. I’ll be here for him, always, but you two have your—” he waves his good hand vaguely, “—thing.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You two have a ‘thing’ too, you know. But I hear what you’re saying, and I talked to him about it already. He knows I’ll be in touch, and I’ll be back. I have unfinished business here, too.”

“Well, if you’re set on going, take BB-8. I’m going to be grounded for a while, he’ll just be bored here. And Finn will feel better if you have someone watching your back.”

Rey smiles. “He is good at that. I’d be glad to take him, thank you. It will be nice to have the company. So, what about you? Staying grounded, I assume not just because of the arm.”

“Yeah, no, the arm’ll be good in a day or three. I guess I’m kind of stuck here for the foreseeable future, until we can establish some interim government, get some more official digs. A lot of old allies are going to be poking their heads back up out of the sand, now—someone needs to make sure there’s something for them to find when they do. We have a good foundation with everyone Lando brought back, but we still need to organize a chain of command, see who we have by way of political leaders.” He huffs out a laugh. “I have… no idea what I’m doing, but that’s never really stopped me before. We’ve come this far, I’ll see it through to whatever end.”

“You’re entitled to a break too, you know. Perhaps more than all of us.”

“No, no, if anyone deserves a break it’s you and Finn. I’m just a pilot who fell backwards into being a General. You two—you’re the real heroes.” He chooses to ignore Rey’s eyeroll. “Besides, I don’t really have a home to go back to either. I have some cousins, I guess, that are taking care of our family’s land, but they’re all older, we were never close. Without my parents there it just feels empty, awkward.” 

“You should talk to Finn.” 

Poe blinks at her. “Finn?”

“With the war over, he’s feeling unsure about his place here. If he’ll be able to contribute, and where he’ll go if he can’t. I told him he’d always have a home with the Resistance, in whatever form it takes, but I don’t think it means the same coming from me. I don’t have any influence here—you do.”

“I don’t know, I don’t think he wants to talk to me.” 

Rey lets out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t be stupid. Of course he wants to talk to you.”

“No, he wants to talk to you.” He cringes at how sullen that sounded. He really needs to sleep.

“Is that what you’re on about?” Another sigh. “He talked to me. Now, he wants to talk to you. But if you stay in here pouting all night you won’t get a chance to.”

Poe opens his mouth to protest, but stops when he sees her smirk and holds up his hand in defeat. “Alright, alright, I’ll go talk to him. But are you two, um, okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, after his big confession. I assume that’s what you talked about. Are you guys, you know...” 

“Are we… what, exactly?”

“It’s fine if you are! Truly, I’m happy for you, you both deserve some happiness after what we’ve all been through, what you specifically have been through. Just… trying to get a sense of if he’s going to be drowning his sorrows tonight or…” _Or if I am._

“Dameron, I honestly haven’t a clue what you’re trying to get at. Speak plainly.”

He’s starting to worry that he’s read the whole situation wrong, but that makes no sense. None of it was making sense. “I thought, when he had something he wanted to tell you, that it was. You know.” Rey looks as if she’s about to chuck something at him. He sighs and knocks the back of his head against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut. This was, perhaps, the most humiliating conversation he’d had in years. He should have stuck with denial. “That he has feelings for you. A love confession, you know? What else do you shout out when you think you’re about to die?”

“Oh.” That… didn’t sound like confirmation. He peeked an eye open to see her blinking at him, brow furrowed in apparent confusion. “Oh no, no. Not at all. I love him, of course, and I know he loves me, but romantically our lives are on quite different paths.”

“You're sure about that?”

“Quite sure. And I'm also _quite_ sure that he wants to talk to you, now, but he's not sure how. He thinks you’re mad at him.”

“Mad at—why would I be mad at him?” It had been a rough few days, the stress and lack of sleep leading to harsh words and hurt feelings, but they’d _won_. It all seems silly, now, to dwell on. 

“You’ll have to ask him. All I know is that he could really use the reassurance right now. He doesn’t have a home to go back to, either. None of us do. You, me, Finn, Rose… maybe we’ll need to be each other’s home.” 

Well. That, at least, would never be an issue. “You’ll always have a home here, all of you. For however long it’s in my power to give. And after that, well—we can always all move in to the ranch on Yavin. You can be the galaxy’s first Jedi livestock guardian.” 

Rey grins. “Maybe don’t tell Rose that’s an option, or we may be moving sooner rather than later.”

He chuckles, picturing Rose and Finn in farmer garb. Maybe someday.

“So, with that settled,” Rey says, “are you ready for this, now?” She holds out a small folded piece of cloth, wrapped around whatever object it was that Maz sent with her. “I can hold onto it if you’d like, it’s no trouble.”

He takes a deep breath, blows it out. “No, it’s ok. I can take it. Thank you, though.” 

She moves closer to set the cloth in his hands, sitting cross-legged in front of him. He mirrors her position, turning the object over in his hands. “Do you want to be alone?” she asks.

He flashes her a rueful smile. “No, actually, I think I could use the support.” He unwraps it slowly to reveal a small piece of polished metal. He lets out a laugh that’s already half-sob—here are the tears. “It’s. It’s a ring. Leia’s ring, it’s—she showed it to me once, she didn’t wear it often. It’s from Alderaan, belonged to her mother. She hid it on the Tantive when she was captured, didn’t find it til years later. I—fuck, I can’t take this.”

“Maz said she left it for you, specifically. She was very clear.”

He shakes his head, speechless, turning it over in his hands, rubbing the smooth edges with his thumb. “Why…”

“She loved you, of course. You were almost all she had left.”

He scoffs, wipes his eyes. "That's not true. She had you, she had Chewie..."

Rey rolls her eyes. "I said 'almost'."

He sniffles a little. “Yeah well. Me too," again, softer: "me too."

“Also, I’m pretty sure she figured that one”—she points at the chain on his neck—”would need a partner, someday.”

He pulls the chain out from under his shirt, cradles the rings together in his hand. “Well, I guess if the hypothetical person doesn't have any family heirlooms of their own.”

Rey raises a brow pointedly. “I think she was counting on the fact that he wouldn’t.”

Poe blinks rapidly, feeling like an overloaded computer. This was all too much to take in after the day—days—week he’d had. His preferences weren’t a secret, she could mean anyone, some future “he” he hadn’t met yet. He was reading too much into it, obviously. “Well, if anyone was going to try and play matchmaker from beyond the grave, it would be Leia.” He shook his head, remembering. “She used to tell me I was her only hope for anything remotely resembling grandchildren.”

He pulls the chain over his head, opens the clasp, and strings the new ring on next to the old. They couldn’t be more different, for two unadorned pieces of metal—one, unpolished, made from spare parts; the other made from flawlessly smooth, priceless Alderaanian ore. But despite that, or perhaps because of it, they fit together perfectly. He took in a shaky breath and put the chain back over his head.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he pauses, bites his lip. “No. But. I will be.” 

“Do you need me to stay?”

He looks up with a weak smile. “No, thank you, I'm... I'm good. I just need a little time. Think I'll sit with her, a bit, then um. Then I'm gonna go find Finn.”

She grins, relieved. “Good. That's good. He needs you. And if I’m not mistaken, the feeling is mutual. Look after each other, yeah?” 

He nods. Looking after Finn would never be a problem. “How about you? You alright?”

Her eyes unfocus, looking past him at something unseen. "I will be."

He nods, standing to offer her a hand up, clasps her shoulder and pulls her into a hug with his good arm. "Thank you. You know you're not alone, either. If you need us, when you need us, we're here."

She steps back and squeezes his hand before letting go. "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to Michelle and Bexy for the probably thousands of hours ranting post-tros. apologies to Michelle for killing Kes Dameron, please forgive me I love you.
> 
> title shamelessly stolen from Babylon 5, thanks joe
> 
> finnpoe part 2 is outlined, so subscribe to the series if you're interested! thank you for reading!!


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